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VIRGINIA. 



ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE 



®as|mgton an^ |£ffcrs0n ^mks, 



UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. 

JUNE 30, 1868. 



Altera jam teritur bellis civilibus aetas. 
****** 
Feriisque nirsus occupabitur solum. — Horace. 

• Another ago now worn out in civil wars. 
****** 
And to the wild beast and the wilderness 
Restoring soil which Romans called their country." 



;# 



By Gen'l JOHN S. PRESTON 



LYNCHBURG: 
SCHAFFTER & BRYANT, PRINTERS. 

1868. 



F 



S2T 



In Exchanger 
Duke University 
MIL 12 1933 



cokresponde:n^ce. 



TJniversitt of Virginia, July 1st, 1SG8. 
Hon. John S. Preston, 

Dear Sir, — At a special meeting held by the Washington and Jefferson Societies, the " Joint 
Committee to elect an Orator," was unanimously instructed to request for publication, the 
eloquent Address which you delivered before them on the 30th of June. 

As the medium through which this favor is asked, permit us, to add our individual solicita- 
tions, and to request that you will not withhold from the public an Oration which met with 
universal approbation, and which will tend strongly to direct the attention of the young men 
of the South, to the just appreciation of the duty which devolves upon them, as representatives 
of those States — once conscious of their might and sovereignty — but which now lie bleeding 
at the footstool of Power. 

Hoping, sir, that this communication will meet with your favorable consideration, we are, 
with sentiments of the highest esteem and regard. 

Your obedient servants. 



CHARLES J. FAULKNER, Jr., West Virginia, 

Chairman. 



COMMITTEE OF WASHINGTON SOCIETT. 

R. W. OWENS, Maryland, 

G. S. COLEMAN, Virginia, 

J. H. POPE, Texas, 

DeWITT C. GALLAHER, Virginia, 

M. P. REESE, Georgia. 



COMMITTEE OP JEFFERSON SOCIETY. 

T. R. JOYNES, Jr., Virginia, 

J. B. GANTT, Georgia, 

J. ROCKWELL SMITH, Kentucky, 

C. P. ELLERBE, Alabama. 

I. RAYNOR, Maryland, 

W. H. CLOPTON, Alabama. 



University of Virginia, July 1st, 1868. 

Dear Sir, — I have received your cordial note on behalf of the Washington and Jefferson 
Societies, asking, for publication, the address I had the honor to make before them. 

Although this address was prepared with exclusive reference to the time and occasion of its 
delivery, trusting that concurrent circumstances might give it some efficacy, yet I cannot 
decline to submit to the public that which I ventured to utter before the Societies of the 
University of Virginia. Its artistical defects and literary crudities will be pardoned by all 
whose criticism I care for, and I am very sure that its sentiments and purposes will be 
approved by every true Southern heart. 

I believe every lesson, profitable in the life of man, can be learned in the old and new 
annals of Virginia, and to them I have endeavored to turn the eyes and hearts of her youth. 
May a God of Truth vouchsafe to them the strength, as I know they have the virtue and tho 
will, to work out the redemption of the grand old Republic. 

Allow me, Sir, through you to express to the Societies my earnest gratitude for the graceful 
and cordial reception and attentions they bestowed on me, and which contributed so largely 
to make my visit to our glorious " Alma Mater," one of the happiest events of my life, and 
with special thanks foryour kind and constant courtesy, I am, dear Sir, 
Faithfully your friend, 

And obedient servant. 



JOHN B. PRESTON. 



To Charles James Faulkner, Jr., 

Cliairman Committee, d-c, d-c. 



Gentlemen of the Washington and Jefferson Societies 

of the University of Virginia : 

The Teachings of Greece came from Olympus, where Hesiod saw- 
palaces fitted for the dwelling and the councils of gods; and from 
Helicon, whence flowed that Hippocrene which still sends its fertili- 
zing waters over all the realms of human thought and science; and 
they came out of her deep blue skies, gazing into which Plato was 
taught, "what worlds and what vast regions hold the immortal 
mind." Beneath her soft Ionian skies. Homer learned to sing of 
gods and heroes combatting in the cause of love and honor. It was 
from Paros and Pentelicus the cold marble sprang to divine forms. 
In Tempe and Ilyssus Anacreon gathered his myrtle and vine. 
Demosthenes caught the .lightning which flashed from his lips by 
those resounding seas which fell upon the shores of Marathon and 
Salamis and Thermopylaj, where Aristides and Themistocles advised, 
Miltiades commanded, and Leonidas died in the cause of Grecian 
liberty. 

The teachings of Rome came from the virtues of two centuries, 
which have made her name, in all time, the proud synonyme of patriot- 
ism ; from laws, which, after the lapse of more than a thousand years, 
are again transfusing their spirit into the codes of free nations; and 
from the rule of the world for five hundred years. 

The teachings of Israel were amid the waves of the Red Sea, and 
beneath the thunderiugs of Sinai, and the Christian's lesson was 
from the grander revelations of Calvary, and by " Siloa's brook that 
flowed fast by the oracle of God." 

I propose to point you to a nearer lesson, in the historical gran- 
deur of Virginia, and the wonderful gifts of Providence in her lands 
and her skies, her men and her women, her institutions, and especi- 
ally in her legacies to you her living sons. 



ADDRESS. 



Gentlemen of the Washington and Jefferson Societies 

of the University of Virginia : 

The Teachings of Greece came from Olympus, where Hesiod saw 
palaces fitted for the dwelling and the councils of gods ; and from 
Helicon, whence flowed that Hippocrene which still sends its fertili- 
zing waters over all the realms of human thought and science; and 
they came out of her deep blue skies, gazing into which Plato was 
taught, "what worlds and what vast regions hold the immortal 
mind." Beneath her soft Ionian skies, Homer learned to sing of 
gods and heroes combatting in the cause of love and honor. It was 
from Paros and Pentelicus the cold marble sprang to divine forms. 
In Tempe and Ilyssus Anacreon gathered his myrtle and vine. 
Demosthenes caught the .lightning which flashed from his lips by 
those resounding seas which fell upon the shores of Marathon and 
Salamis and Thermopylae, where Aristides and Themistocles advised, 
Miltiades commanded, and Leonidas died in the cause of Grecian 
liberty. 

The teachings of Rome came from the virtues of two centuries, 
which have made her name, in all time, the proud synonyme of patriot- 
ism; from laws, which, after the lapse of more than a thousand years, 
are again transfusing their spirit into the codes of free nations; and 
from the rule of the world for five hundred years. ■ 

The teachings of Israel were amid the waves of the Red Sea, and 
beneath the thunderiugs of Sinai, and the Christian's lesson was 
from the grander revelations of Calvary, and by " Siloa's brook that 
flowed fast by the oracle of God." 

I propose to point you to a nearer lesson, in the historical gran- 
deur of Virginia, and the wonderful gifts of Providence in her lands 
and her skies, her men and her women, her institutions, and especi- 
ally in her legacies to you her living sons. 



VIRGINIA. 



If, in what I say, there be a lesson worth learning, it will be of 
equal application from Mount Vernon to the Rio Grande. 

I have thought it safest gentlemen to recite this slight prologue, 
that you may have better guidance through my rambling speech, 
that you may know the goal we aim for, although we may go ever so 
deviously, through uneven, tangled, and, it may be, perilous paths. 
Keep in your minds the glory of Virginia, and my tinkling baubles 
will not mislead you very far. 

There was a time — a long time — when as citizens of the State of 
Virginia, and thereby, citizens of the United States of America, we 
held our estate by a tenure unknown to the civil institutions of any 
other people. Each man's fealty was his own due, and he rendered 
service at his own will. Near thirty millions of people were obe- 
dient to the laws made by themselves, and to no other earthly power. 
Under these laws, self-imposed, order reigned, and liberty was regu- 
lated in its enjoyment, and, as we believed, was assured in its trans- 
mission. The whole compulsion was to do right — the sole restraint 
was to prevent wrong. Constitutions, laws, customs, and habitudes, 
seemed to insure perpetual freedom and make us the instruments of 
God's highest purposes for man, in our spontaneous adaptation of 
His decrees to our uses. The State of Virginia had created the 
constitution of the United States, the foundation principle of which 
was the confederation of Sovereignties for the purpose of mutually 
ensuring the civil and political rights of their citizens. It was the 
wisest application to modern civilization of the grandest conception 
of ancient wisdom. It seemed to concentrate the wisdom of three 
thousand years of philosophy, of speculation and of experiment, 
and the result presented a spectacle unfamiliar to the eyes of man- 
kind. Greece and Eome may have aiforded brilliant examples of a 
near approach to it; while their poets and philosophers dreamed of 
Liberty, and their wonderful law-givers and statesmen, at times, 
stood upon the very verge of our Truth, still between them and the 
essential principle we believed we had grasped, there was a profound 
deep they could neither fathom or span. Their philosophy specu- 
lated and their patriotism experimented on a thousand of the forms 
which man's incessant longing gives to his hopes of liberty. Aris- 
totle counted these forms by the hundred, and with that 
consummate wisdom which came from the combined teachings of 
Socrates and Plato, commended the best parts to the Greek use. 



VIRGINIA. 



Yet, notwithstanding all the efforts of primitive virtue, of philoso- 
phy, of later wisdom, even of divine inspiration, if we travel back 
along the foot-prints of history, we will find at every turn of the 
high road, and in every pathway, men struggling and battling, tearing 
and killing, nations swaying to and fro, orders, forms and dynasties, 
rising, shining, and sinking beneath the waves of Time. In all time 
we will see the earth red with blood, because tyrants would rule, 
and man will be free. By a thousand successions of forms, man has 
been kept to the yoke against which he has never ceased to fret and 
struggle, for amidst the darkest clouds of human degradation the 
immortal Spirit of Liberty has never paused in its efforts for his 
emancipation. The Macedonian conquests could not crush it — the 
bloody hand of Nero could not quench it — it did not perish in the 
filth and gluttony of later Rome — it survived the iron-breasted 
Attila, and the crown and sceptre of Charlemagne ; in dark feu- 
dal times, it hid away in Helvetia's peaceful vallies and Jura and the 
Alps were its walls and guards — it winged the shaft of Tell — brooded 
over the field of Runnymede — gave a new soul to Europe by the 
word of Luther — drank the blood of Tyrants — swept across the far 
Atlantic — conquered a continent and gave to mankind a Washing- 
ton and his Virginia. Not force or tyranny, not infidelity or super- 
stition, not the seas or the wilderness could stifle that immortal spirit, 
which gave that gift to mankind, and made us what we believed our- 
selves to be, as citizens of the State of Virginia, and thereby citi- 
zens of the United States of America. Where is it now ? Four 
days hence there will be celebrated over this continent that momen- 
tous act by which the world, we and our posterity were to gather the 
fruitage of that gift — for, the profane mockery — the blasphemous and 
ghastly jest is still enacted in the name of Washington and his lib- 
erty. In those days of Rome when Tiberius and Caligula and Nero 
made the whole earth foul with beastly corruption, she still called 
even them by the name of Caisar — still pretended to elect her Con- 
suls and Tribunes, and, by a disgusting farce, these Caesars were sup- 
posed to die on the sacred spot where the Catos and Scipios and 
Cicero the " Father and deliverer of his country," laid down their 
office ; and her so-called senators continued to sit in purple robes, 
as they did when — 

" There was a Brutus who would have brooked 
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome 
As easily as a king." 



VIRGINIA. 



In those spectral mockeries no spark of Roman liberty was left. 
They were smouldering ashes, and their names were but foul and 
tattered banners drooping over graves and charnal houses. Their 
dust and shreds vanished before the blast of the Vandal, as swooping 
down like a gathered storm, he chased the Roman Eagle from Dacia 
to the shores of Africa. But still the high Roman names of Cato 
and Cincinnatus, Scipio and Cicero, were flaunted from the Capitol, 
with those of Tiberius and Domitian and the rest, as this week the 
high Virginia names of Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Madison, 
Marshall, the Masons, the Lees and the rest, will be flaunted over 
this continent, with those of the men who now "rule in Rome." 
For, if you take these Virginia names out of the rolls of American 
fame you leave faint glory for its festal days. Blot Virginia — Vir- 
ginia deeds and Virginia names from the sun of American glory, 
and — 

" Oh I dark, dark, dark. 
Irrecoverably dark. Total eclipse." 

And on that festal day, will it not be asked, where is Virginia — that 
Virginia that made that day and set it apart in the calendar of 
nations, that Virginia which created American Liberty and gave 
glory to a continent and an epoch. One of her earliest historians in 
his first lines says — 

" By how many endearing motives is she connected with the world at 
large — as the elder branch of a Confederacy which threw down the gaunt- 
let to kings — as the asylum of oppressed humanity — the faithful depository 
and guardian of public virtue — as abounding in intelligence and valor. A 
correct history of Virginia would be the history of North America itself — 
a portion of the globe, which, enjoying the privilege of self-government, 
promises to eclipse the glories of Greece and Rome." 

And in further testimony of the grand historic renown which, she 
had achieved even in her earliest days, the strongest and proudest 
nation of the earth, by order of the greatest living man, decreed 
national funeral honors to the Son of Virginia, and Napoleon Bouna- 
parte bowed the oriflamme of France and his own laureled brow in 
reverence before the name of Washington, the Virginian. 

Dare we, claiming to be the inheritors of this grandeur, now, with 
bated whisperings, trembling as we stand here beneath the crum- 
bling pillars of our temple, talk timidly for one hour of that Vir- 
ginia, as in my youth here I have seen the poor Indian in rags and 



VIRGINIA. 



misery, wandering back from his exile, and straggling over the coun- 
try searching for the traditional mounds which marked the greatness 
and the graves of his ancestors, and then crooning over them in sad, 
subdued mutterings. It is a crime now — it is treason for us to 
speak aloud of the greatness and virtue of our dead, who died for 
that Virginia Washington gave — the Virginia from 177G to 1865, 
"'Tis treason to love her — death to defend her" — for that Virginia 
is ticketed District No. 1. But as in the wreck of nature moved 
by the hand of the Eternal God — 

" Star after star from heaven's high arch shall rush. 
Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush. 
Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall. 
And Dark, and Night, and Chaos mingle all, 
'Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm, 
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form. 
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, 
And soars, and shines, another — and the same." 

In truth, the orbit of nations is traced by the hand of God, as 
distinctly as that of the planets. In this orbit there are often tre- 
mendous repellent and disturbing forces operating under laws as 
fixed in the social as in the physical world. Even after a state is set 
in motion by the force of the highest human virtue and energy, the 
passions, the desires, the selfishness, the rapacity, all the sins, crimes, 
and even necessities of men, are continually at war with the majesty 
of Right and the power of Truth, and the contests result in the 
explosions of Revolutions or the crash of sudden change, sometimes 
for good — often, very often, for evil. In the body of the earth the 
terrible forces issuing from the central mass find their vent in fiery 
currents over its surflice, or in the upheaving of the girdling oceans, 
which in wild and angry power twist and splinter it into shapeless 
fragments, leaving them as the only memorials of the past. So in 
nations and societies. Who can measure the measureless destruction, 
the fearful change, the misery and the woe, which come when those 
fierce passions of men are loosed, whose fury can be quenched only 
in those seas of blood which hide beneath their red waves, all pre- 
existing forms. It is not twenty years ago that noted philosophers 
and wise statesmen told the world, the age of war, like the age of 
Mammoth and Mastodon had passed — that the strifes and agonies of 
nations were at an end, and that the advance of civilization no longer 

B 



10 VIRGINIA. 



demanded the sacrifice of liberty. Yet the breath of these words 
was not cold when we, we who are here to-day, were gazing over — 
struggling in, a raging sea of blood, of contest more dire, destruc- 
tion more complete, than ever came from the wrestling of dynasties, 
the cruelty of fanaticism or the ferocious ambition of the world's 
worst conquerors. We here, have seen war reechoing the ruthless 
cry of its primal ferocity, and joining with the remorseless lust of 
avarice and fanaticism, sweeping away a people, destroying their 
institutions, and by the power of man repealing the ordinances of 
God. And now after the blast of that dread tempest, we turn our 
seared eyes upon the scene, we ask, in terror stricken bewilderment, 
where is Virginia ? Is that shrunken, mutilated, charred corse, the 
mother of Washington, the creator of American Liberty, the great 
gift of God to the New World, the blessed among the nations, the 
examplar and the model of the world ? 

Oh, the grand old Mother ! Behold her this day seven years ago, 
as clothed in the panoply of Pallas * she arose from the lethargy of 
years, her eyes kindling with the memory of the giant sons of her 
youth. She grasps her spear and waves her golden hair and standing 
on her capitol, shouts again -her ancient war-song, and calls around 
her, her warrior-children, and they come from her plains and from 
beyond her many-folded mountains, and from the shores of her 
resounding seas, and printing their knees in her soil, devote them- 
selves to Virginia — an hundred thousand Decii, and rush forth to 
defend her borders, to save from sacrilegious touch, the very hem of 
her royal robes and to die for Virginia ! Alas ! alas ! there she sits 
now, her limbs torn away, her bosom lacerated, her very womb 
stamped to barrenness by the heel of her conqueror, and her 
heart turned to stone, but still weeping blood. There she sits 
enthroned in misery at the feet of her conqueror, listening drearily 
to the wail of her pale and hollow-eyed daughters, cowering in 
her empty lap, or gazing at her dead sons, in their blood, still 
unentombed. 

Oh ! bear that sacred dust softly to the mother's feet, and bid her 
wake again to life. Tell her, in pious accents, that as long as the 
river flows where Jackson fought, as long as the mountain stands 
where Ashby fell, as long as faltering tongues can syllable the names 

* PaUas Athene was sometimes called " pro-machos," " the front-fighter," a name earned by 
Virginia on a hundred battle fields. 



VIRGINIA. 11 

of Stuart and the Hills and Pegrams, and an hundred thousand others, 
as long as Mount Vernon and Monticello look down on her plains, 
as long as blood and ashes can fertilize her soil, as long as the 
incense of Truth and Right goes up to a God of Truth, the seed of 
Virginia cannot perish. Young men of the University of Virginia, 
that great God of all Truth hath appointed you the guardians and 
the heirs of this heritage of glory, of misery and of hope. Keep it 
in your hearts, plant it down deep, water it here from the fountains 
of science and true philosophy, gather the dew-drops from every 
battle field, and let it be warmed to new life by the sunshine of a 
century of unclouded glory. 

By heroic valor as exalted as that which drove the Persian hosts 
from the shores of Greece, your fathers achieved that liberty which 
comes of a free government, founded on justice, order and peace. 
Besides this, the wisest precautions, and the keenest devices ever 
used by man in the construction of a government which was meant 
to perpetuate liberty, to strengthen, elevate and advance human soci- 
ety, were pursued by those founders of the American Government, 
and they were moulded into grand, and, as was believed, durable 
shapes, in the Constitution of the United States and the Constitu- 
tions of the States. They seemed almost divine inspirations given 
to solve the great problem of true human government by those won- 
derful written and sealed compacts of Sovereign States, guaranteeing 
to each other a system of liberty suflBcient for all the wants and all the 
aspirations of man. It seemed to be the active reality of the 
dreams, the toil and the struggle of mankind for three thousand 
years. All man's fretting and strife seemed by this solution to have 
gained on earth their great reward. The whole world was confident 
in the principles on which the forms were erected, and believed in 
their sublime destiny even after Washington had gone back to 
Mount A^ernon, and Jefferson to Monticello. That confidence was 
confirmed by the heroic struggle of eight years to achieve the 
release from despotic domination, and the profound wisdom, the 
clear, just and sagacious interpretation, and the unselfish abnegation 
which was manifested in constructing the intricate forms. And 
that confidence was again justified by fifty years of enlightened, 
orderly and progressive liberty, in which the example became a bea- 
con-light to guide the stormy struggles of other nations. Now it 
was to uphold, preserve and perpetuate those very principles and 



12 VIRGINIA. 



forms ; to multiply that truth, aud to attain that destiny, that you, the 
immediate oifspring of the founders, went forth to that death grapple 
which has prevailed against you, the victors rejecting the principles, 
destroying the forms and defeating the promised destiny. The Con- 
stitution you fought for embodied every principle of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, and guaranteed the free Constitution of 
Virginia. It did not omit one essential for liberty and the public 
welfare. You fought for the identical words inscribed by your 
fathers, and added thereto but one line, and that was to consecrate 
your work to the living God. You stood up amid the rage of battle 
and raising your pious hands, in which you held the wisdom of your 
fathers, you commended it to a God of Truth, and baptized it in your 
blood. You strove for that same liberty. That liberty was lost, aud 
now the loud hosanna is shouted over land and sea — " Liberty may 
be dead, but the Union is preserved. Glory, glory, glory to Massa- 
chusetts and her Hessian and Milesian mercenaries." Your fathers' 
wisdom, your own struggle is but "a school-boy's tale, the wonder of 
an hour." God has allowed to prevail those powers which subvert 
the works of wisdom, and seek to eradicate the seeds of virtue. 
But His chronicles and all history tell us that forms built up by 
such powers, are but the " fruit of Sodom." When I look at you, 
who in the softness of youth fought a sterner, bloodier fight under 
Lee, Jackson and Johnston, than your fathers did under Washington, 
I know, aye, I do know, the seed of Virginia cannot perish ! We 
know, that which is sown is not quickened except it die, and we are 
taught, that if we be steadfast in the work appointed for us, God 
will give to that work life and power until what was death is swal- 
lowed up in victory. The regeneration of Virginia is the work God 
has appointed for those who have come here to-day in the names of 
Washington and Jefi"erson, for by no other names under heaven, save 
such as these, shall ye know your proper work. 

It seems to be almost a determined law of nature that human his- 
tory shall move in re-current, but to our apprehension, most irregu- 
lar cycles, with distinct evolutions, however, which enable us at long 
apparent intervals to interpret its similitudes without resorting either 
to the artifices of imagination or the devices of fancy. When we 
look carefully at the records and see a great Trtith, born perhaps on 
the outskirts of Roman civilization, at a village of Judea, slowly 
working its way to development, we may trace its progress, step by 



VIRGINIA. 13 



step, sometimes with indistinct perception, again with absolute com- 
prehension, Tintil we find it piercing the human lieart, fixing itself 
on human institutions and shining over the world, or else fading 
beneath the craft of human wit or the storms of human passion. 
Often in this progress great masses of storm-laden clouds obscure 
our whole horizon, at times sending forth terrific bolts which have 
slaughtered millions and blasted nations; in the old times, to feed 
ambition and the lust of power — in these later days — our days 
here, to satiate fanaticism and pamper avarice. We may read in the 
chronicles, of governments which bind in chains the image of 
God, morals which loose the passions and sufi'ocate the charities of 
the human heart and religions which blacken the souls of men. 
We who are here to-day have seen all these concentrated into one 
act until it swelled into an assertion of superiority over all princi- 
ples, systems, doctrines, and creeds which pertain to human science, 
usage and hope. We have seen this assumption trample out Truth 
and place its own trophies at the feet, and its own glittering, but 
false jewels on the brow of crowned Error. I''nder this reign, you 
may live to see a vague and proSigate theology, a mirage of ethical 
expedients, together with a wilderness of rude despotisms or turbu- 
lent democracies, representing the religion, the morals and the civil- 
ilization of the age, while Truth and Eight seem lost forever. Sub- 
dued, fallen, stricken, wandering in captivity, the Hebrew still 
carried his Truth deep down in his heart, and when it seemed lost 
to earth amid the temples of idolatry, in the fullness of time it came 
forth again, even from beyond the wild hills of Galilee, and the 
wise of earth came to worship it. So all through the darkest epochs 
of human degradation, that hope of Liberty which dwells forever in 
the hearts of men, may trace its Truth, catching glimpses as of the 
fabled fountain, which sinks beneath the stormy seas still raging over 
it, to rise again in other lands or other times; or that same hope 
may pierce back into the past and see Greece beating away from her 
shores the hosts, the crimes and the errors of the East ; or that same 
immortal hope, all else lost, may hear that mild voice, but speaking 
as by authority from Calvary, " Trust ye the Lord." Trust ice the 
Lord. 

Yes, my young countrymen, silence may brood over waste Pal- 
myra, and Memnon's mute domain; the cry of nations from amid the 
cedars of Lebanon may be hushed ; the sacred land pressed by a 



14 VIRGINIA. 



dying Saviour's bleeding feet, may be a desert ; cruel, bloody, remorse- 
less tyrants may rule at Fort Sumter and at Richmond ; but they 
cannot crush that immortal hope, which rises from the blood soaked 
earth of Virginia. 

Gathering together our knowledge of these things and still guided 
by that cynosure of hope, we might make an effort to predicate and 
analyze our coming part in the great drama of this New World, in 
the past scenes of which we have already played with such various 
fortune. We would mark its differences and divergencies, move 
along its parallelisms and identities, and thus, holding on link by 
link, we might reach a point of just, perhaps prophetic, interpreta- 
tion. We might trace a rude, coarse and mechanical philosophy, 
joined with a self-asserting fanaticism gradually but fatally abandon- 
ing the principles and subverting the forms of enlightened freedom. 
We might see a series of delusive' and vicious expedients substituted 
for the action of revealed justice and established right, until the 
vulgar crudities of a government are exceeded only by its remorse- 
less cruelties. We may not dare however to trust ourselves within 
that scope on this occasion. As sure as there liveth a God of all 
truth, the hour will come for the discussion. But, gentlemen, we 
have no true knowledge, if we assume that our condition, our fate, 
our destiny, or by what ever other, wrongful name we may call the 
ordinances of God concerning us, is either anomalous or altogether 
without example. Allowing for certain marked discrepancies, we 
are running the same career allotted to all under inexorable laws of 
universal application. The grand discrepant elements of being 
placed in the wilderness of a New World remote from the old 
nations; of the strange institution of African slavery, just termina- 
ted by wicked violence; of the equally strange composite institutions 
of Democratic Republicanism, now seemingly on the verge of term- 
inating, either in ferocious anarchy or consolidated despotism, do not 
relieve us from a rigid and uniform tribute to the exactions of 
national life. The nature of man and the economy of God demand 
this tribute, and we are paying the first instalment and sealing the 
delivery with blood and fire, and what we are now. The chronicles 
are all over red with the story and we can claim no exemption, from 
the penalties of strife, bloodshed, national destruction and individ- 
ual sufi'ering imposed by the inscrutable will of God on the follies 
and crimes of man. 



VIRGINIA. 15 

My countrymen, I have said and reiterate, that remove from the 
rolls of American fime the names and deeds of Virginia, and a bar- 
ren field is left for festal declamation. I think I may assert, that save 
the bright and glorious tribute of her Southern sisters — almost if 
not quite her peers in some of her loftiest attributes — this is literally 
true. All else of which America boasts dwarfs before the grandeur 
of her record and yet the world has been deluded in to the belief 
that American liberty, progress and social elevation had their origin, 
their birth and growth, in other lines of latitude on this continent. 
This falsehood was concocted, and uttered almost as soon as Vir- 
ginia had attained American Independence and Liberty and graft- 
ed them into the institutions — the danger past, and the fruition 
begun. It has been so persistently asserted for eighty years, that its 
authors and promoters, the whole world, and we ourselves, began to 
believe it. The busy world sheltering itself from its own perils, does 
not stop to refute lies which do not concern its own safety, and by 
their iteration is often induced to adopt them. It did not alarm us 
a few years since to hear the " awful goodness " of our Washington, 
our own Virginia Washington — he who stands in human history with- 
out a similar or a second, who " wherever the bright sun of heaven 
shall shine, his honor and the greatness of his name shall be — and 
make new nations" — I say, it did not startle us to hear our demi- 
god belittled to the New England standard of heroism, in the meas- 
ured, smooth, and mechanical rhetoric of one who was rated as some- 
thing better than a pedant in letters and a charlatan in statesman- 
ship — the majesty of Washington drafted by the rule and square of 
New England moral discipline, and painted in rhythm calculated on 
a note-key. Nor would it surprise or offend the world to see some 
Hessian Lieber, hired to defame his benefactors, or some Bancroft 
with ponderous mendacity write great books, and call them "His- 
tory" to claim for New England the names and glories of the 
" Father of his Country," the "Author of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence," the " Demosthenes of the New World," the " Father of 
the Constitution," the " Mansfield of America," and others of like 
lustre. I have heard, that in remote countries to which the names 
of Massachusetts heroes have not reached, Eobert Lee and Stonewall 
Jackson have already been so claimed by the propagators of New 
England fame. More shameless and far more dangerous falsehoods 
have been written of American history. We did not refute them, and 



16 VIRGINIA. 



they have resulted in what we now are. It has been written, and 
believed and acted ou, that all the wonderful achievements which 
gained these titles for Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Madison, and 
Marshall, that all they worked for, fought for, died for, lived for, was 
to establish a government under which their country, their Virginia, 
was to be mangled, parcelled out, obliterated ; their children, the sons 
and daughters of their loins, robbed, slaughtered, and degraded to 
serfs, in the name of the Union ; and, in the name of New England 
civilization and New England Christianity, Washington and his 
brood of infidels and savages were to be driven from the temples of 
Christ, whose altars can be served purely, only by the chaste priest- 
hood of Boston and Brooklyn. And, in pursuance of that assump- 
tion, it has been decreed by the justice and enforced by the arms of 
New England, that all the wisdom, valour, courage and virtue with 
which God had inspired Virginia, to establish Truth in a New 
World, were given in order that in less than two generations, the only 
visible life of that Truth left her should be the bleeding remnant of 
those heroic sons who on an hundred battle-fields vindicated their 
breeding in the struggle to preserve that which God had given their 
fathers — the Virginia from 1776 to 1861 — Years of equal glory 
and sanctity in her calendar. 

It was under that system which she proclaimed in 1776, that 1861 
found Virginia grown to gigantic strength, proportions and majesty, 
with a social virtue and happiness not excelled by the most favored 
peopled of any age, and with her vast territory under the most 
genial skies, healthful, fertile and so various, as to embrace within 
her own borders all the forces necessary for material developments 
and all the attributes by which the highest civilization might be 
attained. You are familiar with the map. Set it before your eyes as 
we stand here in the centre, see what Virginia gained at Yorktown 
and lost at Appomattox. What she was, what was your fathers', 
what she is, what is yours. There, too, you may see how, long ago, 
with infatuated magnanimity she gave an empire, stretched from 
the Ohio to Lake Superior, to aid in the construction of that Con- 
federation of States, which with maternal pride, she believed would 
perpetuate the order of Liberty she had achieved and bestowed on 
them, but which, with base, unnatural ingratitude, have wasted 
the heritage, and destroyed the womb that gave it birth. Within 
the borders which she retained for her own dower, and her inalien- 



VIRGINIA. 17 



able sovereignty, there came, in that eighty years, order, progress, 
strength and rich prosperity, and with these virtue, refinement and 
true religion dwelt beneath her prevailing dominion. Iler cities were 
busy and expanding — her fields were burdened with and redolent of 
golden harvests — her schools were filled with aspiring youth and wise 
teachers — her counsels were guided by unselfish patriotism — her peo- 
ple worshipped the God and cherished the glory of their fathers with 
pious devotion, ever " singing the merry songs of peace and treading 
the perfect ways of honor." Behold Virginia then, mighty in 
strength, glorious in virtue, beautiful in her mountains, her plains, 
and her seas. There she reposes in the midday light of her glory, 
" with all the princely graces which adorn, and all the virtues which 
attend the good" — gaze at her. How grandly, gloriously beautiful 
she is. Close your eyes for a lustrum — and your ears to the earth- 
quake and the tornado which are terrifying the earth. Turn again ; 
behold ! Where is Virginia ? 

" Silence is over thy plains. 
Thy dwellings all lie desolate, 
Thy children weep in chains." 

We have not read this story in the chronicles ; it is not a tale told 
us by our grand-dams. Oh ! could Liberty once more revisit her 
earliest home on these beautiful plains, how would her votaries flock 
from the uttermost borders to chant her eternal glories and die again 
for liberty and for Virginia, and, "she from the sacred ashes of her 
honor shall star-like rise again — as great in fame, as she was, and so 
stand fixed ! " 

If then, gentlemen, in my slight and rambling way of speech, (in 
pursuing which, fear I have worn away much of your good patience,) 
I have at all succeeded in indicating a shadow of the majestic virtue 
of Virginia in her past, and thereby, the wonderful dignity of your 
inheritance, may I not, for the rest, assume, that you, who, in your 
own persons, have gilded some of the brightest pages of her history, 
have a just appreciation of your filial duty in the effort to regain 
and preserve the inheritance and stamp it with still loftier titles. It 
is known that in what was Poland, even yet every mother, from 
those who descend from her kings, from the Sobieskis down to the 
humblest artisan, is religiously teaching her children to read, write, 
and as much science as they can get, and also, what is forbidden to 

D 



18 VIRGINIA. 



be written, the traditions of their country. By weight of arms Russia 
has crushed the life, but not the seed out of Poland. You, who are 
the sous of sires who first taught mankind the true lessons of liberty, 
have come to your mother's University to gain the first step toward 
the recovery of your father's lost lesson. Here you are to acquire 
the power of knowledge, from those who join genius and learning 
to public virtue and blood-proved patriotism. Your teachers have 
dragged their mangled bodies from the battle-field, that they may 
develope, shape, expand and purify your faculties, for the sacred pur- 
poses to which your allotted time on earth so earnestly appeals to you; 
for on you is imposed, by the Eternal God of Justice, the dread 
responsibility, the holy duty of redeeming a lost State. It is a task 
far more difiicult, far more perilous than the creation of a new State. 
On you devolves a sterner, a more sacred duty, than that in which 
Washington's triumph, and Lee's failure were of equal glory. God 
knows, I do not mean to be blasphemous when I say, humbly, that 
redemption is a more glorious attribute of divinity than creation. 
Already some of you have watered the seed of Virginia with your 
fresh, warm, young blood. You did so because your faith was that 
the sovereignty of Virginia was the life and essence of that order of 
liberty your fathers had established. To this faith you gave every 
attribute of body, mind and spirit in four long years of death strug- 
gle. You saw by the light of your fathers' prophecy that when that 
sovereignty was merged in the nationality of the United States, the 
future historic grandeur of Virginia would be recorded under the 
style and title of District No. 1. Virginia is so ticketed, that her 
sentinel-guards may know their beat. 

The forms, the deep convictions, the very life of ages dissolve like 
fading dreams. The vestiges of human energy, worn deepest, and 
most gilded by the proudest civilizations, are leveled, over-grown, hid- 
den, lost. Time, itself, seems but a graduated scale to mark inexo- 
rable change. The earth beneath us, with its forests and mountains 
and seas, is hourly changing, the wide expanse around us dawns, 
glows, and fades ; the heavens over us with all their soaring worlds, 
change. No mountain or wave, no radiance or star, is the same to-day 
and to-morrow — all is change; butnothingof God's makingcan perish, 
death itself is but a change of form, nature passes from shape to 
shape, but its clement, its primal principle is the same. The hardest 
granite, the purest diamond, may be crushed, pulverized, sublimated, 



VIRGINIA. 19 



turned to thin air, but new crystallizations will gather around the 
imperishable nucleus. Now it is a grievous and pitiable spectacle 
to contemplate the mouldering vestiges of our own departed great- 
ness and lost liberty, the rotting and pestilential fragments which 
are left to us. It is too heart-rending to see the dreary desolation 
which has invaded our pleasant places, the homes of our industry, 
our opulence and our happiness. Indeed, it seems unnatural that a 
land so young, so vigorous and seemingly so blessed of God, should 
thus early sink into decrepitude and exhaustion; our fields, our vines 
and our flowers, so soon encroached upon by the forest and jungle, 
from which, but the other day, our fathers had conquered them, and 
to see too the cedars and the palms which were the pillars of our 
temples and the shelter of our people, prostrate and covered with 
fuzz and thistle, and the inner and the upper places at our altars 
held by the robber, the pharisee and the hypocrite. To you this 
change is terrible, it is so to my old eyes, now growing too dim to see 
even the bright things of earth, but must look beyond for their vi- 
sions. You are just entering on the veiled path of life. What liv- 
ing light is before you, what sun-capped mountain, what beacon in 
the skies to guide your darkling steps ? You look along the dead 
waste and level, disturbed only by the dust of the earth. Like the 
lost wanderer of the desert you gaze before you and see no livin"' 
thing. You may sink in blank despair, but from your knees look 
upward, behold, deep-shining in the heavens, those bright eternal 
spheres which will give you light to guide your way, and cheer your 
heart with their divine melodies. Then young men, rise up ! make 
one more effort. Draw from the funeral pyre of Virginia, the mem- 
ory of her transcendent past, and like the Eastern Magi, it will reveal 
visions of a new life, and gladden your souls with dreams of a bright 
enduring future. In that past, you will see a noble Commonwealth, 
reared by wisdom and valor on the granite of Truth and Hight, 
and building thereon a pure system of national liberty, with institu- 
tions the fruit of that liberty, and illustrated by men who guarded 
that fruit with the courage, and the deep, clear wisdom of unspotted 
patriotism; men who looked straight into the bright countenance of 
Truth, and drew from her all their inspiration. There too you will 
find the stern sublimity of that true " love of country," which was 
incarnate in the dust now reposing at Mount Vernon and Monticello. 
And if, with the drawn sword over us, the chains on our arms, the 
lash at our back, and the torch at our chamber doors, we dare draw 



20 VIRGINIA. 



from a still nearer past, and speak of a people wliose name is now 
blood-blotted from the rolls of nations, we might say, in God's hear- 
ing, that the records of those nations will be hunted in vain for a 
people, who in devotion to their rights, in stern resolve, in heroic 
valour, in calm endurance, in meek submission to, and humble reli- 
ance on a God of Truth, in the very piety of patriotism, surpassed that 
people who five years ago called themselves Virginians. Robert 
Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Leonidas Polk were the true type of 
the adaptation of these people to the cause in which they perished, 
and of these three Christian Soldiers, two were shot to death leading 
these people to death, defeat and degradation, aud the other, thank 
God, still lives, the foremost living man of all the earth. This is 
the past, which with pious hands, you may draw from the funeral 
pyre of Virginia, and let it open to you its magic visions. These 
visions may be so dim as merely to beget dreams, but dreams, 
strangely mingling that past with the coming future, and floating on 
in the misty realms of Hope. Wise men have thought that if dreams 
be not realities, they may, at times pre-figure, if not become, the 
sternest realities of life. Marathon and Salamis did not perpetuate 
Grecian liberty — but, when long after — when Sparta was no more, 
and the Roman Consul had razed the wall and temples of Corinth 
and the Acropolis was a ruin, the Greek still dreamed of liberty, aud 
hoped on. When the mighty Julius quenched Roman liberty in 
the Rubicon, and his Brutus had fallen, after the high Roman fash- 
ion at Philippi, and centuries of wrong had filled the world, the 
altar of Liberty was rebuilt on the plains of Ravenna; and, again, 
after more centuries had wrapped Christendom in night and chaos, 
the iron heel of superstitious tyranny crushed from the great heart of 
Nicola Rienzi a shriek which startled the sluggish ear of Europe, as 
if it were the echo of the raised voice of the first Brutus crying, 
" Justice, Liberty, Rome again is free." And then, too, see, in 
another land, the descendants of Alfred brought banners on which 
were blazoned a tyrant's oath, sworn at Runnymede beneath the 
frown and uplifted sword of new-born Liberty. And then, again, 
after more long centuries, in a far off land, beyond the far Atlantic, 
the descendants of these banner-bearers speak by the words of a 
brother, thus: " Is life so dear, or peace so sweet as to be purchased 
at the price of chains and slavery ? Forbid it. Almighty God. I 
know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me Liberty 
or Death," and his brethren flocked to the struggle for liberty or death. 



VIRGINIA. 21 



And, see again, in tliat struggle there came an hour so dark, so 
dreary, so hopeless, that the greatest souled man who ever lived in 
the tide of time, stood appalled, weeping over starving armies and a 
lost country. But even in that darkest hour he raised to the God 
of Right his own God-like front, and placing all his trust in him, 
cried, " Up, up once more brothers of the holy cause, and strike 
again for God and Liberty," and lo, his country is free ! Later, still 
later, nearer and nearer, and the dim light of historic vision blazes 
into a meridian sun, and we see — as we see the Heavens at midday — we 
see a small feeble state stand forth untrembling against the power 
and the sentiment of the world, and. strike the first blow for self- 
government and the faith of its founders; then an uprising over half a 
continent, a rush to Virginia, she already in the van, with her 
ancient armour on, the voluntary organizations, swift as the phalanx, 
firm as the legion, the fierce courage, the high chivalry, the unflag- 
ing devotion from Manuassas to Appomattox, the sacrifice of wealth, 
ease, luxury, the obedience to rule, the respect to order, the woman's 
work and woman's prayers, the open and abiding trust in God. The 
cause of all is one, and the teeming wombs of sister sovereigns pour 
forth their sons to mingle their blood on the field of sacrifice. From 
Gettysburg to Galveston the gurgling tide flows on together — no 
alchemy now, can separate that crimson flood. It is mingled for 
eternity, flowing on forever at the throne of a God of Truth. Come 
what may, the sneers of the world, which cares only for success; the 
slime of the conqueror who spits on dead lions; the woild holds no 
page of human virtue, braver, purer, brighter, than that which tells 
the struggle, the fall, the woe of the people of the Confederate 
States. Why perished the Spartan at Thermopylae ? What gilds 
all the coasts of Greece and the Roman name with an imperish- 
able halo ? What exalts above all, Washington and Virginia — the 
Potomac and the Rappahannock ? What but the pure and perfect 
love of that Liberty which will be a living worship when Washing- 
ton, and Lee, and Virginia are no more ? In the stormy night of a 
thousand years, let one star appear behind the dark-rolling clouds 
and from it, that Spirit of Liberty will come forth and brooding 
over the dark chaos, will make it pregnant with a new life. 

Oh I my young countrymen, are these the dreams or the realities 
of history ? Dare an eager, living hope, wakened by the visions, 
have a ti'ust. There may be listening to these humble appeals, some 



22 VIRGINIA. 



noble youth, who, with the soul of Washington, or JeflPerson, or 
Henry, or Lee, will again bring the sacred banners on which regene- 
rate Virginia has stamped her ancient blazonry, and plant them on 
yonder blue mountains, and that beneath these banners, before the 
long shadows of the setting sun shall hide them forever, you — you 
who are here to-day, will again sink your knees to the earth " with 
more impression than common suns," that, beholding you thus, 
Virginia may a third time know her own offspring. 

Think you I have forgotten God's holiest, best gift to Virginia — 
Virginia's purest glory ? Amid all the grandeur of her historic 
renown, gilding it with superior splendour, amid the tribulations of 
all her struggles, sharing every labour, amid all the deep bitterness of 
her unnumbered woes, soothing every wound, and from first to last 
shedding over all her history a bright, tender, holy radiance, stand 
the women of Virginia. From the mother of Washington^ and the 
proud matronage of our first days, down to the pale, hungry, half- 
clad, patient watcher in the field hospital at Appomattox, the women 
of Virginia have proved their perfect title to the great name they 
bear, and their worth of the good gifts Providence has bestowed on 
them. It is eulogy enough for those who were of the days and kind 
of the mother of Washington, whose breeding made their sons the 
founders of Liberty, that they were worthy to be the mothers of 
those women whose sons and brothers have lost that liberty. Exalt 
our mothers and grand-mothers as they deserve, and alongside of 
every virtue, every grace of life, every gentle sympathy, every gene- 
rous sacrifice, every act of high courage and noble fortitude, I will 
prove a parallel from among those who are beside us here to-day. 
In modest reverence, look around. See ! they are here beside us, 
sharing our slavery, comforting us in our misery, and cheering us in 
our hope. 

My office and duties in the Confederate State services, brought 
me to know more than any other man, the trials, the sorrows, the 
labours, the sacrifices, the heroic daring and almost super-human 
fortitude of our woman. Many long nights have I sat, choking 
with sympathetic but proud grief, as freed from the turmoil of the 
day, I read the sad stories coming to me, equally from the mansions 
of the rich and the huts of the poor, from every home and fire-side 
in the land. It was full of sorrow, but very glorious, the wives 
sending me their husbands, the mothers sending me all, every one of 



VIRGINIA. 23 



their sons, in cheerful, heroic, but always in prajful resignation, 
thus tearing out their hearts and offering them, in the name of a God 
of mercy, on the altars of their country's liberty. Oh ! gentlemen, 
it is a tame tale now to talk to you and me of Roman and Spartan 
mothers. Not one of us here who has not seen hundreds and thou- 
sands whose story makes pale the proudest records of Greece and 
Rome. For us it needs no historian's art or minstrels song, to tell 
the virtues of the noblest womanhood, which ever commended a 
struggling people to the blessing of God, for they are here still, our 
pride, our joy and our hope. Remember for a moment — can any man 
forget ? — the thousand days and nights, through every hour of which 
the booming thunder shook the earth, and sent its death-bolt 
amongst us. Can that picture ever fade ? Of the long trains of 
ambulances bringing to our women's bleeding hearts and ministering 
hands, the mutilated fragments of our children and brothers, and 
these women here — those beside you there — these gentle women of 
Virginia — in their houses and hospitals, nursed them — fed them — 
clothed them — prayed with them, and binding them up sent them 
foi-th again to join their enfeebled blows to the few who, with unbaf- 
fled valour, still fronted the countless hosts, as the firm-set rock 
beats back the wild and wasteful sea. 

History dwells with fondest admiration on the story of those 
women who bore their husbands from a burning and starving city. 
With what glowing worship will good men in all time to come, read 
of the women of the Southern Confederacy ! The women of Cre- 
tona worked for a day on the outward walls; the Bravarian wives 
staggered for an hour beneath their living burden. Here — here 
where we stand, and from here to the Potomac and the Rio Grande, 
for four long years of blood, the mothers worked their tears into 
food and clothing for their soldier sous, the wives stifled nature to 
feed their soldier husb^inds, the tender forms of maidens were har- 
dened, wasted, haggard, beneath burdens which might crush the 
muscles of sturdiest men. Why there — it may be that mother, 
heard her first born had fallen, and with one heart-bursting sob, she 
turned away, and altered the garment for the tender one who was to 
take his place in the ranks; that wife, with one wild shriek, knows 
she is husbandless and while the pale orphan draws meagre life from 
her curdling blood, she works, and works and works for the common 
cause. Yes, they worked for us, they clothed us, they fed us, they 



24 VIRGINIA. 



prayed for us, and still, now, in our chains, they work, they weep, 
they pray, and their great reward and recompense will be, that their 
prayers go up to a God of all truth, and by the savour of woman's 
tears and woman's prayers, that God, in his own good time, will give 
us deliverance and liberty ! 

Young men, is there not a lesson and a duty in the historic 
grandeur of this great gift of God — the women of the Southern 
Confederacy ? 

I trust, gentlemen, that I have not erred (and that no one will 
take it amiss) in deeming it appropriate to this occasion, at this day, 
and on this spot, and to you, to recall the memory of the origin and 
growth — the grandeur and fall of Virginia — to mark, however 
vaguely, along the brilliant pathway of her history, some of the 
monuments which are above the reach of the Gothic spear and battle- 
axe, and will live forever though she herself may perish beneath the 
slime and filth which is flooding her land and polluting her air. I 
trust, too, that speaking humbly, I may not be blamed for indicating 
some of the promises and hopes left to her sons and foster-sons. I 
might have more boldly opened the book of your memory and mar- 
shalled before you, in grand procession, a mighty host of heroes, 
statesmen and patriots, and as they passed have pointed to their 
blazonry, even as they stood in life, and uttered not one word for my 
lesson. What a wonderful God-like host it is ! Behold the mighty 
shades as they move along in their majesty through a century of 
honor. See them from 1776 through the miracle of their triumph 
over England to Washington, standing by the sea at Yorktown, 
gazing over the plains of his redeemed Virginia, he sees, up by the 
mountains, his children, his peers, aye, before God and man, the 
peers and the equals of Washington losing that Virginia, and his 
grief is as proud as his triumph. 

Young men, it is a long- stretched out and very noble line of 
shadows; shadows now on earth, glorious, immortal spirit in the pre- 
sence of the God of Right, Truth and Justice ! 

The Athenian filled the labour of twenty years in the construction 
of his panegyric on the glories of his Commonwealth, and gave it 
that compact and massive vigour, and that exquisitely polished simpli- 
city which still charms the world. 

Your poor speaker can only tumble out in rude sentences, the sen- 
sations rather than the thoughts of a few very sad days busy in 



VIRGINIA. 25 

uncongenial pursuits, in the midst of all our woes, on themes subli- 
mer in action, import and destiny than were ever dreamed of by the 
Grecian. He urged the States of Greece to vie with each other in 
the freedom and justice of their laws, and in the protection of liber- 
ty ; but with him liberty and equal right were philosophical specula- 
tions, while, if we speak, it must be to recite the most glorious Epic 
which was ever enacted on the trembling stage of human life, and 
then to tell the sad story of lost liberty, lost justice, and of hope 
almost abandoned. We must mourn over liberty as a birth-right — a 
once living worship, created, as we piously believed, to dwell forever 
in that laud of ours, wherein she hath not now a place to rest her 
head. He eulogized the glories of a city — we mourn over half a con- 
tinent; his gods sat on Olympus, ours is the one God, who hath the 
whole world for His footstool Your mission on earth is to regain 
that lost liberty, and transmit, in undimmed glory, that heritage 
which was given to your fathers and taken from you. To your 
fathers, God gave success, fruition, repose and the admiration and 
gratitude of mankind. For you. He ordained defeat, failure, and 
the regret — if not the scorn — uf the world. 3Iay not. oh ! may not 
a God of mercy be pacified and allow you to redeem your inheritance 
and rebuild the sway of your fathers I A wise, good man says : 
" the sweat of any toil is dried ^it once on the brow where God places 
such laurels." 

Here then, in the days of j^our strong youth, prepare for the 
effort. Struggle and climb by the aid of the knowledge you gain 
within these walls, and by the wisdom and virtue you are taught in 
your own great history. Climb, climb, climb, until you reach a 
height from which the cyuosure of liberty may never ftxll beneath 
your horizon; and then, when hereafter, you are again ready, com- 
mending yourselves to a God of Right, rise up with determined 
souls, and claim that which the noble Volscian demanded, when 
clanking his chains along the Roman ranks, he cried : " Give us that 
which men deserve who think themselves worthy to be free,"' and 
then — no — my old eyes will not live to see it — but blessed be the 
God of my fathers — then — even now — here — standing on the sacred 
places of Liberty, I do see — as in a holy vision, along the uutravelled 
waste of a fast coming future — I see the sacred image of regenerate 
Virginia, and cry aloud, in the hearing of a God of Kight, and in the 
hearing of all the nations of the earth — All Hail our Mother. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



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